The new delivery routes started in Carver Falls on the first Monday in October.

I drove down on Sunday night so I could be there.

At five-thirty on Monday morning, Grandma Dot and I sat in the window of the Corner Cup with two cups of coffee, and watched the big Lakeshore truck pull up across the street. Fresh apples. Fresh lettuce. Fresh bread, still warm.

By six o'clock, the farmers were coming in. By seven, Mrs. Patterson was there with her little cart. By nine, the produce section was busy and the shelves were still full.

“A hundred and thirty-one before nine,” said Grandma Dot, looking at her notebook. “And not one of them came out with just bread and milk.”

Within six months, the Carver Falls store was making money for the first time in eight years. So were the other nine stores in the pilot.

By the next summer, all thirty stores were on the new routes.

None of them closed.

And one morning that spring, a long black car pulled up outside the Corner Cup. An old man with white hair and big rough hands walked in, sat down at the counter, and ordered a cinnamon roll.

“You must be Dot,” said Henry Lambert. “I hear you're a very good counter.”